


In Blind Faith

by temporalDecay



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 11:56:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/pseuds/temporalDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dragons are rare and noble creatures; made of song, with souls of melody and spirits of performance. </p><p>And when trolls arrived and one by one, you emerged into the world, great and terrible things always followed in your wake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Blind Faith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Etnoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/gifts).



Dragons are rare and noble creatures. For better or for worse, there were never many of you. There was, in fact, a very precise number of you. You were all made, not born, at the exact same time, sang into being by the Singer Herself for designs only She knew. Whether as a gift or a promise or a whim, she never made any more of you, nor could you make any more of you. You all curled inside your eggs, mind stretched and bound tightly to each other even if you were scattered throughout the planet, and waited. Dragons were rare and noble creatures; made of song, with souls of melody and spirits of performance. You all knew, one way or another, that you would not escape your eggs until the time was right, until your time had come. 

In the depths of a dark, inhospitable forest, there rested a scale that is said was built by the gods themselves. Long, long ago, before the Empress of the hooked smile rose to power, someone found you, still hidden away inside your egg, and placed you on the scale. Opposite of you, sat the ancient skull of the first mother grub. You knew this for certain, because it was one of your own who killed her, scorching her until her bones were blackened by their fire. You didn't know why you were placed there, or by whom, but you were not harmed by it. Flaresoul, the only dragon who was awake at the time, rushed to your side the moment you felt yourself moved, but he found no clue as to what had happened, or why. You resigned yourself to your new perch, since the grandiose scale seemed intimidating enough to offer some protection, and decided instead to push your senses so you could learn to see the world even from within your egg. 

It wasn't so bad, back then, when the world was new and young and innocent. You had each other, voices curling into soft notes that played in the realm of dreams and the space within your minds, rather than the “real” world. You shared words and stories and names and knowledge, trying desperately to build an identity to call your own, to be unique beyond your race, and justify your own existence. And when trolls arrived and one by one, you emerged into the world, great and terrible things always followed in your wake. Still, the connection didn't break, even as the others hatched. You shared their feats and their strength and their eventual deaths, one by one, learning and waiting for your own adventure to begin. 

But time went on, unforgiving and unstoppable, and the world went on with it, through wars and revolutions, rebellions and revolts. Trolls came and went, far outside your reach, and your own kin slowly joined the dance, hatching and living and eventually dying. You grew fewer and fewer in numbers, until scant a dozen of you were left, whispering amongst yourselves and wondering what would be of the world, when dragons were no more. And then Pyralspite awoke to the world, shocking you all by doing the unthinkable: she became a lusus. 

In the past, some of you had agreed to help and even befriend some trolls, when they proved themselves worthy of your might, but never before had a dragon claimed a child of their own. Pyralspite defended her choices, though, ignoring the way her actions had turned your mental harmony into a sour song. When she grew enough, she brought her child to see each you, as if meeting the small girl would explain everything. The others didn't think much of the small girl pressing her palms against their eggs and whispering awe about their beauty, but you were intrigued. When she came to you, you felt a spark of something grand twist in your gut, a ghost of the Great Song that reminded you of your creator, so long lost into the depths of the ocean where none of you could reach. You touched her mind with yours, ignoring Pyralspite and her nervous warnings not to harm her child. You didn't. You liked the girl, something in the labyrinth of her mind calling out to you and making you feel an echo of bittersweet familiarity. You alone gave her a blessing and a song, and quietly found joy in following her exploits in life. 

When Pyralspite’s child died, you echoed her grief with your song, and those who still remained, moved by the sincerity of her lament, gave up their offended pride and sung along with you, trying to ease the pain. It took her many sweeps to find a note of joy in her song again, and even longer to admit a troll companion once more. 

You didn't like him. 

You didn't like his passion, boundless and too deep for a creature so small, and you didn't like his powers, clumsily upsetting the symphony within your joint minds. He lacked the charm of the Pyrope girl, her honest awe and her willingness to bow her head to things larger than herself. He was brash and often impertinent, but you knew Pyralspite had chosen him of her own will, not simply coerced into service by his infernal mental meddling. You didn’t cry for him, when he died. And while Pyralspite’s song spared some notes on the brevity of all things, compared to your kind, you rather think she didn’t really miss him, either. In the end, you saved your mourning for when the great dragon, the one who lived the longest outside the safety of her egg, finally died in the solitude of her own nest. 

Centuries piled on, and still you waited inside your egg, until the day you realized there was no longer a chorus to your song. Sitting in the Scale made by the gods, lost in a forest no troll had crossed in forever, waited the last dragon of the world: you. 

  


* * *

  


You could feel her in your bones.

You felt her come in the very depths of your soul, a distant, far away note that fit perfectly within your song. You waited and waited for the egg to break, to release you into the world, but nothing happened. You shifted inside your prison, and for the first time, considered the safety of your egg as such, as the song in the distance kept on calling you. After eons waiting in your spot, and centuries with only your own voice for company, you should have more patience than this. You knew yourself far more patient than this. But you couldn't help it. The wisp of melody kept calling to you, with a visceral intensity you knew not how to name.

You abandoned your attempts to break the egg soon enough, realizing the foolishness of the attempt. You would hatch when your time was right, that was the way you had been made by the Singer, the Goddess lost in the Depths of the Abyss. You could not go against your very nature. But you knew, as you knew what your nature was, that you could not ignore the call. So you gathered your mind to yourself, vast as the ocean of time you had lived through, and extended your awareness to the forest. Every tree and every leaf, every tiny creature crawling in between, you had seen them grow. You knew them all, as the whole that comprised your forest. Now you sought them out as individual parts, small and insignificant yet necessary to articulate each other into something greater. You chose a serpent buried under a nest of dried leaves, finding the reptile mind familiar enough to welcome your nudging. You thought of Pyralspite's second companion and his recklessness to push his will onto other creatures and his inability to realize he was doing so.

You sang to the coil of scales, instead. A soft song. A generous song. It listened and swayed its head to the rhythm of your song, back and forth, sinuously. And when it decided to leave the forest, it was its own will that moved it, not an extension of your own. You felt it leave the edge of your forest, gone to the source of the song that you desperately wanted to find. Perhaps it would grow tired of the journey and come back empty handed. Perhaps it would take the song for itself. Perhaps it would try and fail, for it was just a small creature against a very large world and the journey was dangerous enough. You couldn't know. You curled inside your egg, humming along the notes and pretended very carefully to be patient enough to simply wait.

Wait.

  


* * *

  


For the second time in your life, you felt tiny hands pressing against the hard shell of your egg. But this time, there was no other dragon to voice an opinion on your choice, no other voice to sway into seeing things your way. The girl - _your_ girl - pressed her ear close to the surface, filling you with a strange, possessive warmth. She was small and fragile, and she made you feel very, very old. She opened her mind readily to yours, bright and new and strangely _yours_. Yours to love, yours to guard, yours to cherish, yours to teach and yours to protect. You wondered, basking in the heat of daylight, if this was what Pyralspite felt like, when she chose her own child. You wish for your freedom, for the ability to stretch your wings and show your child the wonders you've amassed in the millennia you have lived. You long to see and explore the world together, and aid her in all her endeavors.

When your child is blinded, left crying and bleeding at the feet of the scales that house your egg, you learn the meaning of true hatred. Your song burns in your mind, powerless against the void of loneliness. You sing and weep and swear the moment your egg hatches, you will find whoever did this and deliver unto them the greatest pain imaginable. But your egg remains stubbornly intact, and what can you do, but wait and instead comfort your child? You reach for her, nudging her mind and refusing to recoil from the strident disaster there. You offer soothing notes, chipping at the distorted tune until you manage to worm a strand of hope into it. She will live. She will learn and she will do more than live.

You teach her the songs, for the world itself was made of song, by She who dwells in the darkest depths. You teach her the tones and the scales, the harmonies and the symphonies hidden in everything around her. Her senses learn, bit by bit, to hear rather than taste and smell, and her eyes learn to see by hearing what the rest of her senses tell her. It takes her very little time to adapt, you think, with an incomparable sense of pride, and very soon she is once more walking the forest and reestablishing her place in the world. The forest is dark and ominous and dangerous to all trolls, but because she carries your song around her, like a ribbon in her hair, nothing threatens her. Nothing wants to, because the forest understands the wrath of a dragon is not a small thing to withstand.

  


* * *

  


In six sweeps, this remarkable, beautiful child of yours has changed you in ways you never thought possible. You still wait impatiently for the moment the egg breaks and you're allowed to fly freely, but it's no longer for the same reasons you once did. You don't care if you're the last, anymore. You don't care about surpassing others with your mighty feats, to be the last dragon of the world and bring the song to End with flourish.

All you want is to spread your wings and take her away from the destruction raining all around you. You want to do something other than sing and wait. You want to _save_ her. You hear and see and smell and feel the forest burning, the ground splintering under the meteors, the countless cries of lives ending in horror and pain. You, who has witnessed the world since the dawn of time, who is old and wise and knowledgeable like few things left, want nothing more but to shelter your child and take her to safety. There's something vile and terrifying in the air, a shrill cry hidden under the frantic melody of destruction. It heralds the End of things, of life and hope and dreams and the world itself, with a certainty you refuse to contemplate. The world cannot end yet, you have much to see and hear and taste and do. You rebel against the idea with every fiber of your being, pressing against the shell of the egg with all your strength. The world cannot end before your child sees all the wonders you've yet to teach her, before you take her on your shoulders and raise her high enough to taste the flicker of the stars and the soft glow of the moons. 

And then, at the peak of your refusal at the unfairness of it all, the egg cracks.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Sout](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sout), who wanted some dragonmom fic.


End file.
